


Her Fifth

by ParadoxR



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Psychological Trauma, Reflection, Unhealthy Relationships, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxR/pseuds/ParadoxR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason Sam's so gun-shy on reaching out to Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Fifth

**Author's Note:**

> Set after "Paradise Lost," with Sam still very raw. Technically canon-compliant, but kind of a whump fest of what being 'Black Widow Carter' might actually do to a person. 
> 
> General references to Sam's relationships up through "Unnatural Selection" (the only real spoiler). Some cursing. Sam was in the 10th USAFA class to allow female cadets.

It wasn’t their fault, she knew. They were good guys, really. Some of them so good she didn’t even count them. Which is part of what makes it so ironic. Of course, it might actually be them. Statistically, she knew there was a solid 3.125% chance of that.

 

She counts Mark first, though in retrospect she’d done it to her father simultaneously. He blamed their dad, and she’d sided with the latter. Daddy’s little girl. Do what he’s always wanted his son to do. Be an officer, be an astronaut. Save him from his real son’s hate. Make him proud. He’d watched her try that for a while, but he’d seen before she had. He’d tried to save her, but she’d driven him away. Maybe even more than dad. _Kid, you’re a freakin’ genius. But when you get right down to it, you’re a people-idiot._ She’d been upset then. And now she was, too. Too damn right for a 17-year-old.

 

So the second count is dad. But really, she’d almost managed it. _Hah! Right. People-idiot._ …For a minute. And then he’d stopped coming. Stopped showing up to meets, stopped reading her articles. Started drinking, Mark cursed. _You should’ve let him be, squirt._ She cringes. She’d sent him her first byline, and he’d missed her first solo. By the time she was 16, he’d effectively kicked her out of his life if not his house. She stopped moving with him at 17. _Why are you still here?_ So there was that.

She’d tried a few years longer, but in the end she’d let him and Kerrigan down, too (he really should’ve been the third). Stopped fighting to be the first female fighter pilot. Stopped pushing to be the son he’d always extolled. She’d turned it around, eventually, getting on heavies in the Gulf and making it to G-training at NASA before the SG, but it hadn’t been enough. She’d tried, he’d looked to her, he’d seen what he didn’t like. Sometimes, even now, she could see that dearth in his eyes. _You could have been so much more_.

 

She didn’t know the name of the third. It probably wasn’t just one. She’d figured, incoming, that the tenth anniversary class wouldn’t be a walk in the park. But it’d actually been quite good. She’d always made good first impressions. A product of moving so much. Of cold-calling on professors mid-semester, trying to convince them that a 14-year-old really could slip into their Fluid Flow II class. But it wasn’t first impressions she was counting. _We needed to teach you a damn lesson about who you really are, bitch. Watch your true colors._ She’d laid there, feeling the spittle freeze in her ear. It’d been going so well, until then. She’d thought she’d made a good colleague.

 

Which was probably why she’d been so quick to the fourth. Jonas was sweeter than he was professional. He’d charmed her off her feet, and she’d thought he’d idolized her. Which felt safe for the first time in ages, if not particularly smart. _Learned that one the hard way, people-idiot._ His pain was almost addicting in a world where she hadn’t been able to salvage her other relationships, and she couldn’t stop feeding him favor. He’d found out everything about her in months. She should’ve been home free, then. He knew her; he’d stayed. But it’d had the same effect it always did. That knowledge—he’d almost consumed her alive with all the hurt he’d realized she’d take from him. He had consumed himself. Even then, she’d been too stupid to see how badly she’d failed him.

 

_Haven’t you ever wondered why the only people who want you are the people who don’t know you at all?_

She’d wanted to ignore it. To ignore it like Mark (50/50), like Dad (25%), like 'him' (12.5%). Sometimes the others even helped. Good people she’d met, with deep love. And yet, she’s only ever a vision. They’d die for that vision. They often did. Love at first sight, an angel, a ghost, a goddess. The pedestal Narim put her on, from whence she’d tried for days after to make flattery overcome discomfit and dread. The stalkers, of which Orlin was the most qualified if not even the most obstinate. …The way Martouf tried so hard not to call her Jolinar; the way something in her just wouldn’t let it go. The way she’d almost let him.

_You’ll never get what you wish for by being who you are._ They see what they want. They love what they see. And then they get to know her. The lucky ones turn on her. The unlucky ones die.

 

And now there was Fifth. If she needed a more direct link, the universe couldn’t have found her one. Naïve. Genuine. Quixotic, even. A miracle of the era. And then she showed up. And he’d known her—he’d gotten everywhere in the first second, only to been hit by all the things that all the others had managed to avoid at first. And what? She’d failed him. She'd felt him, in that second as they'd escaped. Lashing out in frozen time, filling her head in exactly the ways only he'd know how. She’d taught him betrayal, and now the entire galaxy could suffer from it.

 

But? ...But then there’s him. Maybe, maybe, there’s him.

3.125%. She stares a hole through the rustic wood, searching for whether to risk cutting the possibility in half yet again.

Her fist drops from the door.

_It’s better for him this way._


End file.
